The Eerie Optimization of “Self-Care” Decor
Amid the panicked anticipation of an “automation revolution” in the workforce, some of the safest labor sectors remain those dominated by women workers. Perhaps…
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Applying “Applied Art”: Gropius Bau Mines Old Division Under New Direction
The term “applied art” can only read as a misnomer in 2019, when the line between strictly functional and purely aesthetic art practices has…
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Cruising for Sex in the Garden of Eden: Architecture and Desire in Venice
One of the major thoroughfares in the Venetian lagoon, the Bacino di San Marco, is host to a swelling, seasonal parade of cruise ships…
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Courting Crisis: Condescension, Disaster Tourism, and “Learning from Athens”
The pedagogical framework espoused by the title of this year’s two-city, quinquennial documenta – Learning from Athens – preemptively suggests an ethnographic or neocolonial…
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The Tonal Ambivalence of Feminist Land Art Retreat
In 2005, at the Canadian Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, Indigenous artist Rebecca Belmore projected a video installation called Fountain onto a wall of…
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“Liberation and Consumption”: Surveying Korean Art in the ’90s
It’s intimidating to absorb an institutional exhibition that spans a decade of a nation’s art scene, especially as an outsider. So a natural point…
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The Instagrammable Angst of Anne Imhof
The word “angst”’ in German carries a certain weight – as most German words do – that is less evident in its English appropriation:…
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DIS Collective’s Apathetic and Ironic Berlin Biennial Underestimates its Audience
This year’s Berlin Biennale title, The Present in Drag, spells out clearly what we can expect. The aim of the show is to reflect…
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Art and Architecture’s DIY Practices and “Folk Politics”: Radical or Picking Up the Social Tab?
A young architect in Berlin recently argued to me that working with refugees on a design-build project could lend it more credibility and political…
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